Florida politics, policy, and plain-spoken analysis by Gary Fineout.

U.S. House

November 02, 2016

While much of America is waiting for Nov. 8 to come, the date that Tallahassee's lobbying corps is waiting for is Nov. 10.

That's the date that incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran (pictured left) has said he will distribute proposed new rules for the Florida House.

And judging by the chatter among lobbyists, they are viewing it as an oncoming train that will roll right over them and greatly affect the $100 million-plus a year influence industry.

Corcoran, a Republican from Land O' Lakes, has made no secret of his intention to blow up the process or in the words of his GOP caucus designation speech "cleaning up our own house."

And that means adopting rules and laws that will greatly impact what lobbyists can and can't do - and impact what legislators can and can't do.

One of his most notable proposals is his plan to end the "revolving door" between the Legislature and lobbying by pursuing a constitutional amendment that would bar legislators from lobbying the legislative or executive branch for six years not two.

But another big change - which Corcoran himself alluded to a year ago - and which is expected to show up in the new rules is a requirement that lobbyists disclose a lot more information.

Lobbyists will be required to not only name their clients, but to force them to disclose - at least on the House side - the names of the bills, amendments and even the appropriation items they are lobbying House members on.

There's no doubt that if this goes through it will be one of the most substantial changes to lobbying since then-Senate President Tom Lee shepherded the gift ban bill that also required contract lobbyists to disclose (somewhat) how much they are getting paid by their clients. Corcoran's proposed change will allow reporters and the public to match the money paid to the lobbyists to the items that they are lobbying on.

Corcoran, who has been unwilling to share many details of the proposed rules because there's still being worked on, told the Times that it's a "disgrace" that local governments use taxpayer dollars to hire contract lobbyists.

There are rumblings that there are many other changes in the works - including serious changes in the budget process now utilized by the Legislature.

Corcoran - with House Speaker Steve Crisafulli - already forced lawmakers to once again attach their names to budget items they were seeking. The question is whether there will be additional changes designed to bring additional transparency to the way the budget is crafted. Right now items drop into the budget at the last minute with little idea where it came from or who it will benefit.

Now will there be pushback? Absolutely.

Corcoran's motives are already under question, with some positing that this is his way of drawing attention to himself in a possible run-up to a 2018 bid for governor. Corcoran for the record demurs when he is asked the question and said he is gearing up to be speaker.

Regardless, however, the adoption of sweeping House rules will immediately place attention on the Florida Senate - which has had a rocky relationship with House in recent years. Will the Senate adopt similar rules on its side? Or will senators be forced to explain why a higher level of transparency works for one chamber but not the other?

When lawmakers convene for their organizational session on Nov. 22 it could be the start of a tumultuous period for the Florida Legislature and for the hundreds of men and women who rely on the Legislature for their living.

TALLAHASSEE'S LIKELY NEXT DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN WAS ON PAYROLL OF BIG TRUMP BACKER

And speaking of lobbying, former state senator - and likely member of Congress after Nov. 8 - Al Lawson has been straight forward that he has worked as a lobbyist for the last several years for several clients including Florida State University and on behalf of school choice proponents.

But financial disclosures Lawson filed earlier this year revealed that he was on the payroll of the high-powered lobbying firm of Brian Ballard, who is a top fundraiser for Republicans including GOP president nominee Donald Trump. Ballard also has lobbied on behalf of Trump.

Lawson's financial disclosure filed May 16 with the clerk of the U.S. House lists Ballard Partners as source of income exceeding $5,000. This form said that Lawson's duties for Ballard Partners were "lobbying."

Three days later Lawson filed an amended form that changed his duties for Ballard from "lobbying" to "consulting."

(It's worth noting that Lawson's state lobbying registration filings do not show him registering for lobbying on behalf of Ballard.)

When asked about it a few weeks ago, Khloe Greenwood, a spokeswoman for Lawson's campaign said: "Senator Lawson is not currently on payroll with Ballard Partners. He was a consultant during the legislative session earlier this year, and provided counsel for governmental and public affairs on a variety of projects."

Still the connection to Ballard and his firm may have proved useful to Lawson in other ways.

Jacksonville reporters noted that Susie Wiles, a top Trump campaign operative in Florida who also works for Ballard Partners, helped Lawson in his campaign to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown. Lawson defeated Brown, who is currently facing federal fraud charges, in the Democratic primary. In one article there's a paraphrased quote from Wiles saying that the reason she's helping Lawson is because he had a good relationship with the Ballard firm.

There have been few unexpected moments _ such as U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's tussle with reporters about the planned revamp of her district and the sight of U.S. Rep. Dan Webster returning to his old stomping grounds to ask GOP legislators to vote down a proposed map prepared by legislative staff and legislative lawyers.

But as the session reaches its conclusion _ with the anticipation that a final deal on a map will be reached in the next day and a half _ a big parlor game for those in Florida politics is what's going to happen to U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham.

The daughter of former Gov. Bob Graham has widely been seen as a rising star for the beleaguered Florida Democratic Party. Her win last year over GOP incumbent Steve Southerland was one of the few bright spots for the party.

But that could all change.

In order to comply with a court ruling that required Brown's district to be changed the Legislature has settled on a proposal that would split Graham's home base of Leon County in half and shift Democrats in Gadsden County to the district now represented by Brown. The irony is that this proposal was taken from filings made by the groups that sued the Legislature and which was drawn up by Democratic operatives.

While last year was a mid-term year it's important to note that Graham won her current district by less than 3,000 votes.

One analysis points out that President Barack Obama only got 34 percent of the vote in the newly revamped 2nd congressional district as designed by the Legislature. Even though Graham has broken with Democrats in some places _ such as the vote for House Speaker _ it would be hard to fathom her beating a Republican.

Some have speculated that maybe Graham could jump into another contest, maybe even the crowded scramble for U.S. Senate like U.S. Rep. David Jolly did when it became clear that his district would tilt Democratic.

Or maybe Graham bides her time and runs for governor in 2018. Graham noted Wednesday that even House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has recently inquired about her future plans.

But Graham says she isn't thinking like that.

She said she plans to "wait and see" what happens before making a final decision about seeking a second term in office.

And when she talks further Graham sounds like someone who isn't planning to make that decision in the near future. And instead she is a bit optimistic that she may be running for the seat she has now.

"I want to continue to serve," Graham said Wednesday in a phone interview shortly after she completed a workday at Southern Craft Creamery in Marianna. "I'm running under the assumption that I'm running for the seat in which I now serve. I truly love that I have the opportunity to represent North Florida."

Without going into detail, Graham is acknowledging that maybe the battle over redistricting won't be wrapped up anytime soon.

While the Florida Supreme Court gave the Legislature 100 days to draw a new map there is a chance that more litigation could derail everything again. Chief of course among the lawsuits is one filed by recently by Brown that contends the court ruling is leading to changes in the 5th congressional district that would violate federal voting laws. If a judge were to side with Brown it could require the drawing of a fourth congressional map since 2012.

"You never know what is going to happen,'' Graham said. "There's a good chance that everything remains intact for 2016."

Graham, who has avoided the Capitol even though she lives just a few miles east of it, said she believes in the Fair District amendments that created the legal challenge that forced the Legislature to act. Those amendments mandated legislators could not draw districts to favor or disfavor incumbents or a member of a political party.

But she did add, however, that no matter her political future she is opposed to the current Leon County split proposed by legislators.

"It is really a shame for Leon County,'' Graham said. "The whole point of Fair Districts was to keep districts from being gerrymandered. We're taking a district (CD2) that wasn't gerrymandered and turned it into two gerrymandered districts."

That almost sounds like it could be a passage in an amicus brief. And maybe, just maybe, it's premature to write Graham's political obituary.

May 18, 2014

More than two years after lawsuits were first filed a trial is scheduled to open up this week in Tallahassee that challenges the constitutionality of Florida's current congressional map. The trial could last up to 11 days.

Here's a quick run-down to explain what it's about and what's at stake.

WHAT'S HAPPENING: Two different sets of plaintiffs, including a coalition led by the League of Women Voters, have challenged the legality of maps drawn up and passed by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature. The lawsuit asks Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis to declare the congressional maps invalid because they violate a constitutional amendment that requires districts to be drawn in a way so they do not favor any one political party or protect incumbents. The "Fair Districts" amendment was passed by voters in 2010. This lawsuit will answer questions on whether legislators complied with these new standards _ after opposing them initially _ or instead gave them lip service and engaged in a "shadow" process as the plaintiffs allege to draw up districts that favored Republicans.

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Ultimately the makeup of the Florida delegation of the U.S. Congress.

Right now there is a 16-10 GOP edge (although one vacant seat is expected to be won in June by Republican Curt Clawson). The judge could decide that the current map is in fact unconstitutional and require that the map be redrawn. The plaintiffs behind the lawsuit argue that no less than 10 existing seats violate the standards: CD 5 held by U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown, CD 10 held by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, CD 13 held by U.S. Rep. David Jolly, CD 14 held by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, CD 21 held by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, CD 22 held by U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, CD 26 held by U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, CD 27 held by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, CD 15 held by U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross and CD 25 held by U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

It's Brown's district, which winds its way all the way from Jacksonville to Orlando, that may be the one that is most impacted by the litigation.

That's because in the middle of the 2012 session two legislators in charge of redistricting - now SenatePresident Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford met privately with staff and decided at that time to boost the number of African-Americans in Brown's district so that it was a so-called "majority minority" seat instead of having roughly 48 percent African-American voters in the district.

When asked about this in a deposition Weatherford contended that the Senate had made a "compelling" argument to do this because it would help any legal challenges to the maps. The plaintiffs allege that this action wound up taking Democrats from other Central Florida districts and was done to make two other GOP seats safer.

KEY MOMENTS TO WATCH FOR DURING TRIAL: It is expected that during the trial both of Florida's legislative leaders Gaetz and Weatherford will be asked to take the stand. The two men were in charge of the redistricting process in 2012 before they ascended to their current positions. The two men are being forced to testify because the state Supreme Court in a 5-2 decision ruled that legislators and legislative staff are not covered by legislative privilege when it comes to deciding whether or not they violated the "Fair Districts" amendment. Other people who could testify include former House Speaker Dean Cannon as well as legislative staffers, lobbyists and consultants.

THE ALLEN WEST DEFENSE: Another thing to watch for is how many times former U.S. Rep. Allen West's name is mentioned during the trial. It's no secret that some conservatives howled at how the changes proposed by the Florida Legislature wound up affecting West who wound up losing his re-election bid after shifting to a new district. In the past Weatherford and other legislative leaders have insisted they were following the law and that they did not intentionally target West.

But West is already being used by attorneys representing the Legislature as defense exhibit No. 1. House attorney George Meros cited the loss of West - as well as the losses of several other Republicans - as evidence that everything legislators did was on the up and up. The question is how this defense will be viewed by the conservatives and tea party groups that like West.

WHY TALLAHASSEE INSIDERS CARE SO MUCH: While the lawsuit could have reverberations for members of Congress, the litigation also threatens to expose the behind-the-scenes relationships that exist between consultants, lobbyists and Florida politicians. The plaintiffs allege that GOP consultants played a role in helping craft the maps. One of Cannon's top aides - and now working with him at a lobbying firm - sent draft maps to a Republican political consultant. Meros publicly told Judge Lewis in a recent hearing that Kirk Pepper had "breached" his duty to Cannon and that Cannon was furious at him over it.

But there's more than just that: Documents and emails produced in connection with the case have highlighted meetings between legislative staff and GOP consultants and even national GOP officials right after the amendments were passed. What has surfaced so far has also raised questions as to the relationships between legislative leaders such as Cannon and Gaetz and well-known Tallahassee consultants Rich Heffley and Marc Reichelderfer. The Naples Daily News pointed out that Heffley for example was paid $10,000 a month as a redistricting consultant while Gaetz was drawing maps for the Senate.

Meanwhile, for those pushing the lawsuits they have had to answer questions about their own motivations since documents have shown that it was Democratic consultants who helped produce a map that was initially submitted to the judge as an alternative to the map now being challenged. In one colorful passage, a consultant talked about wanting "to scoop as many Jews" out of particular neighborhood in order to bolster the district of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultzand who is also the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

CONFIDENTIAL AND HUSH-HUSH: One of the other big storylines for the trial is why Republican consultant Pat Bainter and his firm Data Targeting are fighting so hard to keep out of public view hundreds of pages of documents taken from the firm. The groups pushing the lawsuit want to use slightly less than 100 pages as exhibits in the trial. But Bainter's attorneys _ who are being bankrolled by the Republican Party of Florida _ have now gone to an appeals court to fight from making the documents public. The court last Friday said it would keep the material secret while it considers the appeal.

On the very least this means the trial will have to start without these secrets from spilling out, and in the end it's possible that the judge can still use the evidence even if the public never knows what it is.

The battle, however, points out that the attorneys pursuing the case are relying a great deal on material they got from consultants because they were less successful in obtaining a lot of behind-the-scenes material from the Legislature itself.

COST TO TAXPAYERS: And while this drags on taxpayers keep footing the bill.

In the build-up to the trial, the state's taxpayers have spent a lot of money to defend the GOP-controlled Legislature's actions. The Florida Senate has spent at least $2 million, while the House had spent more than $600,000 by last fall. (Still awaiting a more to up to date figure from the House.) You can expect that cost to rise significantly after a trial - and possible appeals depending on which side loses.

WHEN WILL THIS BE DECIDED: Very soon. The trial is not being decided by a jury but the verdict instead will handed down by Lewis. He said at a recent hearing that he plans to make his decision between now and the end of June. That's because Lewis is being switched over to criminal proceedings in July. He said he wants to have this wrapped up before he makes that move.

March 11, 2014

Today's election between Republican David Jolly and Democrat Alex Sink over who will replace the late Bill Young in Florida's 13th Congressional District has gotten a whole lot of attention from across the country.

The main characterization is that it will it "test voter moods" and will show whether or not voters will take out their dissatisfaction with the health care overhaul against Democrats.

But just as telling is how Republicans (and yes I know there is a divide between the national and local folks running the Jolly campaign) have made one crucial calculation in the run-up to today.

Think about that for a second. Scott is arguably the leading Republican in the state of Florida. He has his people in charge of the Republican Party of Florida.

Furthermore, he was the one who defeated Sink in the 2010 goveror's race. You would think the last thing that he would want is the resuscitation of her political brand.

Yet it's abundantly clear that the Jolly camp and his supporters are keeping their distance.

Those who have lent their help to push Jolly include Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and on the eve of election, Rand Paul.

But no Scott.

What makes it even more interesting is that Jolly has taken a page out of the Scott 2010 playbook: Using Sink's status as a Democrat to tie to her President Barack Obama and to his health care overhaul. Let's not forget that Sink blamed Obama for her narrow defeat to Scott.

Scott has even resurrected his staunch opposition to the health care overhaul as a key part of his own talking points in recent weeks. But Scott's main help to Jolly was in the form of a Tallahassee fundraiser.

The Miami Herald reported earlier this week that a series of internal poll numbers had made Republicans uneasy at Scott's prospects in the fall.

There can be no surer proof in these numbers than Scott's continued absence from helping Jolly.

And if Sink wins it will spark some interesting questions about what the Scott campaign will do moving forward as they deal with a much more accomplished and better campaigner than Alex Sink in the 2014 governor's race.

October 31, 2010

Florida's bitter, expensive and wild election season will finally lurch to a close on Tuesday.

Voters, besieged by a barrage of political ads, could be forgiven for thinking that the main issues are Medicare fraud, lockstep devotion to President Barack Obama and reckless plans to raise taxes.

But the election's impact on a state with a million residents out of work and hundreds of thousands of homes in foreclosure looms far more prominently than all that campaign vitriol filling airwaves and mailboxes.

"I think that Florida is at a crossroads and so is our country, and the Florida election can make a determination of the future of America," said Gov. Charlie Crist, running as an independent for U.S. Senate.

Crist's decision to leave office after just one term to run for a Senate seat helped spark a frenzied run for governor and marked the first time in more than 100 years that both the governor and all the seats on the Cabinet were open at the same time.

Democrats hope to win back the governor's mansion after 12 years of Republican control and begin to chip away at GOP dominance of the Florida Legislature.

"There's an opportunity here in this election to bring some balance back," said Karen Thurman, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party.

Florida voters could help decide the direction of the country and the state. They could help Republicans seize the U.S. House, give the Legislature a veto-proof majority, or pass amendments that could alter the state's political makeup.

October 14, 2010

House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, made a surprise visit into Tallahassee on Thursday where he stopped by the private Governor's Club for a lunchtime event.

Boehner was coy about his presence in Florida's capital city although he is scheduled to hit a fundraiser in Destin for Republican Steve Southerland later on Thursday. Southerland is challenging U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Monticello in U.S. House District 2 race.

A protest is scheduled near the site of the Southerland fundraiser to highlight what is called Boehner's plan to help with the "corporate takeover" of Washington.

So it was interesting that Boehner refused to say why he was in Tallahassee or at the Governor's Club, whose members include many of the city's most powerful and influential lobbyists.

"I just wanted to have lunch with some of my friends,'' Boehner said.

When asked who his friends in Florida were Boehner said: "I've got lots of friends."

Boehner did heap praise on Southerland, calling him a "great asset to our team."

Boehner added that he expects the GOP to do well in Florida on Election Day and that they will pick up the seats now held by Boyd, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas and U.S. Rep. Ron Klein. He also said the Republicans will win House District 25 race between Democrat Joe Garcia and Republican State Rep. David Rivera.

"We're going to have a very good day,'' Boehner said. "I think there are four races that we can win in Florida, knocking out four incumbents and holding the open seat in South Florida."

Boehner insisted that the policies that have come out of the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration have "made the economy worse" and created "uncertainty" for businesses. And that's why it's "going to be a big election for Republicans in 19 days."